Question of the Day

Have you been impacted by the government shutdown?

Taking advantage of his premature announcement for the 2012 campaign, President Obama headed West this week to fundraise, following the path of early Americans also seeking new identities on the frontier. He’s hoping to find solidarity for his reincarnation as a competent president from a creature that’s becoming as elusive as Wile E. Coyote’s Road Runner: the Obamacrat, one of his declining number of fans who will sing his praises regardless of his abysmal performance.

As even his erstwhile Democratic supporters in Congress have become disenchanted with the arrogant, inexperience-fueled bungling masked by Mr. Obama’s urbane exterior, what better place to look for Obamacrats than Tinseltown, where credibility is gauged by how well one acts like the genuine article? As even his harshest critics admit, Mr. Obama is a pretty good actor.

After months of ignoring his own deficit commission’s report, Mr. Obama finally acknowledged the looming danger brought on by the nation’s economic imbalance by delivering a speech on the deficit. This is a slight turn away from the president’s senatorial habit of voting present on all matters (save for a disastrous attempt at health-care reform that actually reformed nothing), expecting applause just for going to bat. That might have worked for him as a freshman senator from Illinois – particularly after his party took control of the Senate two years into his debut. But to the grief and chagrin of the country, it has proved to be particularly naive for the president of the United States, whether the ball he’s failing to hit is unemployment, deficit spending, protests in Iran or civil war in Libya.

Despite the terrible job he’s done, Hollywood Obamacrats will still give him money and praise, if faint. When Alec Baldwin was asked if Mr. Obama had lived up to his expectations, he replied “I think so,” adding optimistically that in a second Obama term, “We’ll see a lot more of what we want to see.” (Mr. Baldwin is not known for holding back when someone disappoints his expectations, as revealed when he infamously called his own teenage daughter a “thoughtless little pig” in 2007.) During last year’s Gulf oil spill, Oprah Winfrey remarked, “I think the president is doing the best anybody can.”

Mr. Obama doesn’t like to be challenged. The latest proof is his testy response to a Texas reporter who questioned the president on his incorrect non-answers to legitimate questions. That’s why the land of the red carpet and plastic surgery is the perfect place to peddle his new persona. With any luck, real Americans will see through the facade in 2012, and this trip out West will be the beginning of Mr. Obama’s final ride into the sunset.